


Going Once (chicagoland remix)

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Apocalypse, Alternate Universe, Bondage, Dark, Dark Dean Winchester, Gen, Horror, POV Outsider, Prostitution, Season/Series 05, Sexual Slavery, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-08 09:43:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4300002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the tail end of 2009 Houston, Texas becomes the third most populous city in the United States. Elsewhere, the population of Chicago is 36, and one of them is Death. S5 AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Once (chicagoland remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tattooeddevil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tattooeddevil/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Going Once](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/127299) by tattooeddevil. 



SHE'S HEARD OF HIM, is the most she can say as she watches the brown of her black tea drool down the side of its white cup. She doesn't usually drink tea. Usually nothing, to be frank; to be perfectly honest; to be truthful. And she doesn't usually say "frank," so that makes her feel even more a lie. 

She doesn't usually order drinks in restaurants.

Then there's a snag, a silence, and she stares at the unusual brown of the black in her cup, and the familiar amber in his. His eyes are dangerously, pitifully green and she won't look at them.

A restaurant this ain't, he says finally. It's been seconds, maybe hours. Or maybe he says this ain't a restaurant. This is not a restaurant. A restaurant this is not. She's heard of him: He's just a legend, a hero of ancient times (pre-Chicagoland) and oral traditions (post-email). He is one _about whom_ there is dialogue--a silent specimen. And now suddenly he's a story speaking back.

I wanted to be an actress, she says, as though this is the missing piece he needs in order to put her all together. She sips her tea. His hands shake, as he stutters sickly between uncharted desire or dull disgust for the glass before him.

"I've known some of those," he says. She watches him watch his hands as they grip his cup and tap out the stiff, slow rhythm of a song she doesn't know. "People who _wanted_ to be actors--haven't seen 'em in any soup commercials yet. A girl played a ghost for me once, though."

Was she good?

She'd have been better if she'd turned off her cell phone.

She's probably better now. And you're not missing these innuendoes, are you?

What?

Stop looking at your phone and pay attention to me. Can you hear me now?

Fucking hated those dead zone commercials. Only funny 'till you're in one.

What?

Dead zone. Cell phones. Chicago is a--never mind.

You're not making any--

Sorry. I get that a lot; I guess lately I'm not really used to talking to people who aren't--

\--Aren't?

It doesn't matter. You wanted to be an actress.

The Chicago Theatre, she says. If he remembers that.

He doesn't. It makes her world unfold a little, to realize that the spool she'd wound her entire life around apparently meant that little to him. He's supposed to know everything--what the angels did before Earth, what the ghosts will do after. Where the Chicago Theatre stood (the sheet metal across the way, the shattered neon in a pile. The mealy bricks and the fractured concrete, steel bones showing), and what it stood for. He's supposed to know how to save them all.

 

How he was supposed to save them all.

 

She hates him, suddenly, viciously, and is then too busy hating him to be afraid or to pretend poshness--if that's a word they use out here anymore. 

"Are you going to drink that?" she asks, and seeks out her best violence.

No. Yes. No no no yes no. Yes. Finally: "No." 

She waits. 

"Yes," he says, and knocks his drink back, doesn't breathe, barely swallows. He is three seconds of sweaty relief and then is back to normal, off-kilter and guilty and a little bit still-defiant.

"I'm trying to figure out what kind of person you are," she says, sweeping her hands across the table until her brown black tea and its white saucer teeter and crash to the ground. "Dean Winchester."

"Good luck," he says.

She ignores him. She takes his cup and drops it, too. He responds by fumbling his wallet, pulling out obscene bills; as though he can pay for everything that way. Then his flask, absent his earlier vacillation.

"I'm down to 50/50," she continues. 

Because as far as she's concerned, either you choose your failures or you're born into them. "So how much is your fault, Dean? And how much is God's?"

 

\--

 

At the tail end of 2009 Houston, Texas becomes the third most populous city in the United States. Elsewhere, the population of Chicago is 36, and one of them is Death.

 

\--

 

In the end, he buys her for a sandwich. It is too difficult to be angry and hungry at the same time, and hunger is easier to sate. She should hate herself, but it's 2015, and it's Chicago, so if you're alive at all you're winning, winning, winning.

It starts like this: His hands are shaking again. Like they're magnets, norths finding south. Like the crater that was once Chicago is a great big MRI, and his mettle's about to tear him apart from the inside out.  
 "I thought you were an actor, not a doctor," he pants. She's said a line from some five-act, a cloying play on words, Chicago trying to be Wilde trying to be something even better. He's responded by losing the ability to respond. He can't concentrate. Addendum--on her. 

Further addendum--she can't stand it. There's a place, she says. An old cellar. He can find what he's looking for there. The guys who run it still root for the Cubs. Which is funny, actually, because the White Sox still exist; they had an away game, that Wednesday in 2009.

"Not funny at all," says Dean, suddenly directed and purposeful the way he is supposed to be, was always supposed to be. " _Always_ root for the dead guys." He pulls bill after bill from his pockets, like silk scarves, then drinks his winnings like he wished he were dead, too.

It makes a lot of sense. It makes sense like odd Wednesdays in Chicago that turn breezes into shockwaves, buildings into fossils, theatres to headstones, sports bars into churches, and whole populations into Dean Winchester's pillars of salt. It makes sense like missing skylines and national debt (we cannot rebuild) and days of remembrance that make national news that none of Illinois will ever see, because all the wires, all the sockets--everything but the satellites in heaven--they're all gone. And, well, so is most of Illinois.

"I need you," he says when he's finished, is ready to move up his hierarchy of needs. He re-phrases: "You're important."

"Don't bother," she says. She's familiar with need and she's not a fan. Is not partial to it, thinks the part of her that will always wish she were a British stage actress. Doesn't fancy it. She wants to be known, not used.

"You'd be surprised how much I know."

He doesn't know her name, of course--or at least, does not remember it. "Mary," she says, though she is actually a Mary-Ann. Mary-Ann gets fewer callbacks. And she is probably more a Mary anyway.

"Of course you are," he says under his breath. "Fuck."

Briefly, she enjoys the power she can see her name has given her. Then he throws a sandwich at her head and never says her name again.

Pastrami, jack, tomato--and she's his.

 

\--

 

According to legend, according to talk, according to ghosts, in 2009 on an odd Wednesday in November Dean Winchester had one hand on the trigger that detonated a cafe that Death once visited. (And the Chicago Theatre. And Chicago.) The trigger was shaped like a deep-dish pizza, and Dean was supposed to say "Yes." Instead, he said "But Sam."

 

\--

 

"You know the feeling you get when you're tied to a bed?" and Dean nods without thinking about it. They've been treading through rubble, looking for god-knows-what, and he is too tired to be The Dean Winchester anymore. Though to be frank (to be honest, to be truthful), she doesn't think he ever tried.

"And let me guess, the ceiling's coming down on top of you?" he says. 

"Literally or metaphorically?"

If there's a difference, he really doesn't give much of a damn. It misses the point.

"I guess," she says. But it's good that he knows it, either-or or all around, because that feeling is called inevitability.

She says: "Sometimes you wonder what the hell you're doing there"--her breath rushes out from full round cheeks, as if from a balloon--"other times you're just like fuck it, bring it on." The belts and the bed and the sheets and the room, entire buildings streets cities states shave away, whittle down. Disappear. Until there's someone getting fucked, and maybe it's you; or maybe you walked right past it. Maybe you had nothing to do with it at all. Maybe it was excellent; maybe it was just work; more likely, it was a fucking tragedy. Which it always is, because you're Dean Winchester, and you can see the ceiling coming down to bury you.

"Metaphors can blow me," is all he says. (He is not a fan of, isn't partial to, doesn't fancy.)

"And not big on the literals either. Right?"

 

\--

 

There is a small cafe now, in the crater that was once Chicago. When you finish your drinks you're supposed to throw your cups to the ground, because there will forever be far more china than customers. It's something of an art installment. It is the result of one of those queer happenings where everything is destroyed but a cabinet of delicate miracles.

We celebrate this by crushing those, too.

 

\--

 

"I wanted to be an actress," she reiterates. "I made my peace with cliches a long damn time ago." Someone has to be that person, after all. _Did you hear about little Mary, sweet Mary from Shirley, Illinois? Who wanted to trod the boards but ended up----------------_ Someone's got to be an example for the rest of them. 

"It took me six goddamn years to find you," Dean snaps. They are still trekking through rubble, and he's beginning to fold into a limp (slouch forward, collapse side, roll hip). Six unkind years. "Don't tell me about fate. Fate would have made this so much easier."

"Easy, really? Have you talked to any Christians lately?"

"Do angels count?"

 

_Did you hear about Dean Winchester, who---------------_

 

\--

 

The Roosevelt Hotel is sort of a euphemism now, but you can still find it. Chicago, Illinois had gorgeous buildings once. And Room 62 is famous, because angels made it. Open one door and you're in Van Nuys, California. Another, Michigan Avenue, though far from any monuments of note. There are also windows to oblivion and one small closet--and this is crucial--that tips Chicago into multiverse.

 

\--

 

"Thought you'd like that." She nods back toward the door plaque, but he is too busy collapsing onto a mattress to hear her. His breath follows him, the exhalation catching as though there are eight, nine, ten ceilings to break its many-storied fall. 

She wonders if the legends would have been written differently if she were a seven-years kind of hidden, instead of six. Or if they'd met in 2010. Would Dean Winchester be a better man than what she's left with? Or would he have simply disappeared entirely? By early 2015 Dean Winchester has already outlived most of the legends that built him, is sick and fading in parts, some faster than others. Come December, he'll probably be dead. But she hears that outside of Chicagoland, health care remains quite good (by American standards). Wastelands are mostly for the people who refuse to leave them.

And in the end, she figures, you can make a fulcrum out of anything. Maybe in another life, another universe, Chicago's still standing--even though she's still not an actress, she's still tied to a bed, and she's still pretending she's not. Maybe Sam and Dean are still becoming legends. Maybe they're becoming people. Maybe the Cubs are leading the league. Fate is temporally and circumstantially non-specific, but it gets the job done.

_You will always end up here._

 

"How much?" he asks, which brings her back to Michigan Avenue. Those two words sound like inevitability to her.

"Six hundred an hour, five grand for the whole night."

He laughs at her. Asshole.

In case you haven't noticed, she says as offhandedly as she can manage (and maybe she's not a good actress, in the end), she's pretty. It's always worked for her.

"Whatever. That sandwich was six bucks; ten minutes and we'll call it even."

She's halfway to naked before he's said, "I need you to act."

He needs her to act. Casting call: Twenty-six year old female. Post-apocalyptic scenario. She has/had a son, maybe two. The youngest is/was----

"Seven. And that's not funny."

"I'm not kidding." He points to the window. Multiverse. He explains (too) quickly. Then he says "angels."

She hears "slavery." Which is such an old-fashioned word, Dean. Too many immediate historical connotations. In 2015 in Chicagoland, we prefer to call it fate.

 

\--

 

They say--or said--Dean Winchester sold the world for his brother. It cost, pizza included, $7.99 plus tip. And they'd say now, if they knew, that the world sold herself back to him for the price of a sandwich. 

In her defense, in 2015 sandwiches are worth more than they used to be.  
 "In yours," she says, before she agrees, "there are plenty of universes. There's only one Sam. Individuality is an added-value attribute. You're doing the right thing."

It's an awful fucking defense, and she waits for him to call her on it. She waits for him to pontificate to her about the true wealth of the universe. The value of society. The beauty of mankind. The real truth--that this is a world worth saving. (Frankly.) Instead he says, "I don't know. I mean, Sam might not even be--"

 

\--

 

The real truth is, it's a matter of atomic exchange. Dean just needs mass, and anyone will do. Because for two to return through the looking glass, two first must come. Three bodies, two lifeboats.

"Then you do realize what you're asking." He's still exhausted and she'll still naked.

He realizes. He realizes what he's done and who he is and he's already decided: This is all just the ceiling coming down.

"I can't stay there. I need to come back," he says.

Why? Because Sam needs you? Because you still have work to do? Haven't we been through this, and haven't we decided you're lying to yourself? Hadn't you already decided to die? So why not just--

He shakes his head. "I need to come back."

Then why don't I? Why can't I? Why don't I matter? she asks. Why, why.

"Because if you come back, then you die. You all die. The entire fucking planet, and probably Mars and Pluto, too. But If I-- If --"

He wants another drink. She can see his want, written on his bones just like the fate of the world. 

"Then maybe it'll just be me." 

He rolls onto his side and back to his feet, looking not particularly ready for martyrdom. But then, who is.

"And Chicago. You _and_ Chicago."

"Fuck you."

He vanishes very matter-of-factly into the bathroom-minus-plumbing-of-any-sort, and she tidies the room; the ritual feels like a habit without the habit-forming. She fixes herself a cup of tea she doesn't usually drink, and pulls from nowhere a glass of amber whiskey. When he returns he's carrying a bowl, silver, which is filling too quickly with his blood, red.

The spell is simple, he says, though his eyes are already-- _less_. Lacking focus. Lacking the true core of themselves. He dips his fingers into the bowl.

"If it's so simple, why wait six years? Why find me?" she asks. She can hear a rustling in the air, feel down tickling at the back of her throat. He can't.

"Just trying doors." Dean winces, blinks rapidly. Then he smudges out one of the lines he's drawn. Maybe the spell is not as easy as he thought. "You were the first one to say yes."

"Dean," she says. She wills him to look at her. Really look at her. Light dances golden in Room 62, and the brown black tea and the amber whiskey and the white paint and finally, finally Dean Winchester's eyes, all catch fire with it.

 

\--

 

She had always wanted to be an actress. 

 

\--

 

Dean winces, blinks rapidly. Maybe the spell is not as easy as he thought. "You were the first one to say yes."

"Dean," she says. "We were only waiting for you."

**Author's Note:**

> "Are you afraid of losing? Or of losing your brother?" -- SPN 5x21


End file.
